Over 100 people attended a jam-packed cancer research fundraiser for Project AIR at The Address restaurant on rue de Millo last week. The evening included an auction of paintings by Paul Walsh and Carol Bruton and of memorabilia, including a signed hat donated by Formula One champion Nico Rosberg, and a shirt from football player Hugo Lloris, the captain of both Tottenham Hotspur and the French national team. There were also dozens of tombola prizes from spa treatments to Grand Cru champagne.

The “F*Cancer” evening raised an impressive €7,800 for a research project run by Professor Charles-Hugo Marquette through the Fondation UNICE (that supports Nice University research projects) to detect the early onset of lung cancer through blood tests.

“It was a fun night for everyone involved,” says organizer Kashka Kornelak, “I’d like to thank my co-sponsors for all their hard work: in particular Silvia Mischler for her amazing generosity providing the food and beverages at her restaurant The Address; as well as beauty brand owner Daniele de Winter; Stacy Townsend of Exceptional Leader and Eli Brunborg.”

[caption id="attachment_9756" align="alignnone" width="709"] Magali de la Cruz Rio, Operational Manager of Sautter Cigars with Darlo and Anita Di Sotto of the non-profit Monte-Carlo Whisky Society[/caption]
Last week, the Monte Carlo Whisky Society held a Master Class on the terrace of Restaurant Oliban at Place d’Armes.
The theme of the members-only tasting event was cigars, an education led by Cuban-born Magali de la Cruz Rio, Operational Manager of Sautter Cigars of Mayfair. Ms de la Cruz Rio had arranged with her family in Cuba, who own a tobacco farm, to hand roll a special vitola for the Monte Carlo Whisky Society, aptly named “La Flor de Monaco”.
“We have not put a label on the cigar yet,” Ms de la Cruz Rio told Monaco Life, “as I am waiting to get feedback from the Society as to whether I should refine the flavour. Once we have the definite blend, then each hand-rolled cigar will have La Flor de Monaco label.”
Ms de la Cruz Rio was born into a tobacco farming family in Cuba. “Cigars are my identity. To see my father alive, my mother, who’s 81 and still rolling cigars, and smoking a cigar with my grandfather when I was eight.”
Eight? “My father caught me and had my mother roll two tiny cigars, one for me and one for my ten-year-old sister. We had to smoke them. We were green, dizzy, sick to our stomachs. My sister never smoked again. I can’t say the same!”
At the age of 14, Ms de la Cruz Rio attended drama school in Havana, and through the works she was studying, developed an inquisitive attitude towards Castro’s Cuba. She wrote “Requiem to the Dictator” and it wasn’t long before there was a knock on her door in the middle of the night.
“I thought the police were taking me in for routine questioning.” She disappeared for a week in 1994.
“I remember the cold and darkness,” she described as she showed scars after an incident produced by broken glass.
Though a contact with the cultural attaché at the British Embassy in Havana, Ms de la Cruz Rio was released and slept a few nights at the Embassy before being put on a plane, with only a few personal items, to London with the attaché. Although she believed the ordeal was behind her, an army General boarded the plane to try and force her off. Luckily she had diplomatic immunity. “I was not allowed to return to Cuba for eleven years.”
Ms de la Cruz Rio spoke little English but was determined to make her life in London, where her sister lived. She worked as a drama teacher at a children’s school before returning to what she knew best. She became a tobacco buyer in 1996 for the UK DutyFree and then, under the guidance of her brother-in-law who had worked for the Cuban government Tobacco Department in the UK, started to learn as much as she could about the commercial side of the industry. This included travels to whisky distilleries in Scotland, and visits to Spain, France and Italy.
Far from the days of a window dresser in Harrods – “I didn’t know the names of the different materials in English, so that didn’t work out” – Ms de la Cruz Rio’s career has included working at Alfred Dunhill’s St James’ shop and La Casa Del Habano London when, in 2009, Ajat Patel invited her to work there.
From 1900 to 1905, after his first trip to Cuba, Winston Churchill lived above Sautter’s Mount Street store and his first order of Cuban cigars was delivered here. His preferred brand was Romeo y Julieta.
[caption id="attachment_9761" align="alignnone" width="709"] “La Flor de Monaco", a hand rolled special vitola for the Monte Carlo Whisky Society[/caption]
She has sold cigars to Harrison Ford, Andy Garcia and Bill Clinton, who in 2001 appeared at Heathrow Duty Free wearing a linen suit and Panama hat, en route to South Africa. “What can be better than meeting Nelson Mandela than smoking a Bolivar cigar?” the former American President expressed to Ms de la Cruz Rio at the time. What indeed.
Since her exile from her home country, Ms de la Cruz Rio has developed a passion for photography and is working on a book about the history of women and cigars.
Her visits to her homeland are few and far between. The first time back, she was refused entry and sent back to London. On another visit her computer, which contained only photos, was hacked. When her mother came to London to visit, the family farm was confiscated. It would be 18 months later and a large sum of money paid to the government before they could reclaim their land. She considers herself Cuban but London (where she learned that Stalin did not win the Second World War) – is her home.
Commenting on Fidel Castro’s death November 25, 2016, Ms de la Cruz Rio said, “I would never celebrate the death of anyone. I owe him my education, and what he did for women in our country.”
Sautter Cigars is a partner of the Monte Carlo Whisky Society, who will soon have available for purchase Monaco’s only hand-rolled specially blended cigar bearing its name, La Flor de Monaco.
Article first published December 23, 2016.

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[caption id="attachment_16565" align="alignnone" width="480"] Dr Bourlon of the Cardio-Thoracic Centre of Monaco holding a cheque along with the Centre's Director Mr Nervo.[/caption]
The funds raised by last year’s No Finish Line (NFL), which ran from November 12 to 20, were distributed to the charities involved at an awards ceremony held at Stars’n’Bars last week, including the presence of Minister of Health and Social Affairs, Stéphane Valeri.
The 17th edition of NFL involved 11,889 participants who covered a distance of 392,516 km (up from 383,109 in 2015) for a total of €392,516, which was donated in favour of associations for sick or disadvantaged children.
Among those benefiting from NFL were the Cardio-Thoracic Centre of Monaco, which was awarded €115,604 to save children with serious heart defects. The Centre’s permanent staff provide cardiac diagnosis, urgent surgical procedures and paediatric resuscitation, with the most complex cases are handled by specialists of international repute. Beyond the surgical and medical gestures, the whole team is mobilised to welcome children away from their family environment. These projects work through cooperation between several associations: Aviation without Borders, the Chain of Hope and the Monegasque Red Cross.
Monaco Town Hall was given €13,304 towards the Parc Princesse Antoinette Project to enable handicapped children to benefit from a play area specially adapted by the installation of a swing with the other children.
Monaco’s Dance Academy graciously accepted €15,000 to support a scholarship for a young Brazilian student in his training of three years at the dance academy of the Ballets of Monte Carlo.
The Orphanage Béthanie, Benin (€12,000), where the funds will be used to finalise the construction of a second building to house, care, feed, educate and train new children between the ages of 5 and 18 (20 additional orphans received for a total of 32).
The Pelinga School in Mali received €16,600 to facilitate the education of the village children -244 including 115 girls - with good working conditions by financing the finishing work on the primary school.
The Scientific Centre of Monaco received €15,000 for work on the evaluation of a therapeutic strategy for Muscular Dystrophy based on a genomic editing approach, a genetic repair of genomic DNA by replacing the original mutation and by rehabilitating the protein of interest. The cheque was dedicated to Monaco resident Paul Pettavino, who died of the disease in November 2016.
EEAP Henri Germain, part of the Lenval Group in Nice, received €2,112 for the purchase of two tablets and software adapted to children with disabilities, facilitating daily communication with caregivers.
The Lenval Foundation, also in Nice, was awarded €31,359 for the purchase of a gastroscope suitable for infants of 2.5 to 7 kg and designed to facilitate the exploration under anaesthesia of the oesophagus and the stomach through the superior natural routes in complete safety.
A donation of €30,000 was given for the construction of a catheterisation room in Bamako, Mali. This is the second payment of €30,000 after the one made in 2016: to help to finance the construction of a catheterisation room in the Luxembourg mother-and-infant hospital. This project is supported by the Share association and the DCI, the logistics led by Es-Ko, the Stavros Niarchos foundation and the Amade Monaco association being the main contributors.
A cheque for €4,630 was given the Schools State of Karnataka, India to help disadvantaged tribal villages in South India with a school, educational and vocational support system for children of highly discriminated untouchables communities. This payment is the third and the last.
Other charities and organisations receiving funds were the Prince Albert II School, Haiti (€21,410); Comfort armchair for Céline (€3,744); Operation of Farès (€10,000); Fight Aids House of Life, Carpentras (€37,800); Sponsoring children, Mali (€3,240), Foliar extracts from Luzerne, Senegal (€8,000); Playground, Excelsior villa, Cannes (€11,800); IRCAN, Nice (€15,000); Nursery Bamako, Mali (€17,180); Special Olympics Monaco: purchase of snowshoes for the Olympic Winter Games, which took place in Austria, cost €990; Monegasque Sailing Association: Financing of three days of baptism for sick children and disabled persons: 30-minute flight, video and diploma presentation and exercise in a simulator. Children are also invited to a lunch. Each day allows 7/8 children to discover gliding, total cost of €4,000; 4L Trophy: purchase of sports equipment for Moroccan children, cost €404; Association Krav Maga Côte d'Azur: mission in India,: €3,000.
In addition to presenting cheques, NFL also recognised the young people the completed the most kilometres for their age group during the eight days. All three of Ben and Sally Rolfe's children received trophies.